Authors: Deborah Challinor
October 1900
J
oseph forced himself to wait until his tea had brewed before he allowed himself to open his letter. It was only the fourth he had received since he’d been in South Africa; the mail system was woeful and letters from home went astray with disappointing regularity. Mug in hand, he settled down to catch up on the news from Kenmore.
July 1900
My Dearest Son,
I hope this letter finds you well — Andrew sends his regards, as do the children. Did you receive my last parcel? Mrs Muldoon made the fruit cake, Jeannie the shortbread, and Keely knitted the socks. When I suggested they might be a little long, she said you could always give them to your horse to wear if it gets really cold.
The children all miss you, but Keely most of all, I suspect. Rathbone caught her knocking the blooms off his prize dahlias the other day, and said she was very rude to him when he told her to stop. Andrew is of the opinion she will grow out of this rather unpleasant behaviour, but she is eight now and there is no sign of it yet. She can be a delightful child, but I fear we have spoiled her, and are now paying the price.
It turned out that the dahlia episode was a result of being banned from playing with the other children. Evidently they are sick of Keely insisting on being the Queen and ordering them to be killed in battle so she can put flowers on their graves. James tells me this is not on, because everyone knows British soldiers hardly ever die. It is worse for poor little Ian — because he is the youngest, he is nearly always relegated to being the ‘dirty Boer’, and has to die at least twice a day.
We had one of our dinner parties at Kenmore last week, and I am afraid that some of Andrew’s opinions did not sit well with several of our guests. He does not approve of the Fifth Contingent being sent so closely on the heels of the earlier New Zealand contingents, and said so quite bluntly, adding that New Zealanders should not be quite so quick or willing to dance to the Empire’s tune. Well, several people were scandalised — it was rather amusing, really. It is not the war he objects to, so much as New Zealand’s lack of autonomy in matters pertaining to it.
Nevertheless, we have all been very busy raising money for the Patriotic Fund. We had a floral fête in Napier, with a parade of floats and children dressed up as little soldiers and nurses and Zealandias and Britannias. Unfortunately, there was also an effigy of President Kruger, and when somebody set fire to it the children appeared absolutely delighted. I am not sure if this level of enthusiasm is quite healthy.
We have also been busy preparing food and comfort packages and sending them off via the New Zealand Express Company. We read in the papers that you are moving around a lot, so we hope that they are finding you.
People are doing all sorts of things for the Fund. There are several women’s groups going about the country dressed in uniforms similar to the outfits worn by the New Zealand contingents, performing military exercises and riding decorated bicycles in formation to raise money. There was a photograph in the Weekly Press recently of one such group, the Dannevirke Huia Khaki Contingent, and I must say they did look a little odd. Andrew and I had quite a giggle, until we read how much money they had raised.
Another rather startling phenomenon is the rise in the number of School Cadets, there are literally thousands, and we hear it is the same with the Volunteers. Thomas and James are both members of the Cadets, although their training is a little irregular from what I can see. They dash about being little soldiers with wooden guns, although both have their own rifles for rabbit shooting, but their father will not allow them to take them to school. I should imagine that most of the school boys around here have their own guns. I am not sure I am happy with my boys being trained as soldiers at such a young age — it is bad enough having you away fighting in South Africa — but Cadets is part of the school curriculum, so I do not expect there is much I can do about it.
But, my dear, enough about us. How are you? Are you getting enough rest and plenty to eat? Were you at New Zealand Hill, or involved in the relief of Kimberley and Mafeking? The newspapers were full of stories about the exploits of the New Zealanders, and there were parades and even half-holidays in some towns after Mafeking. We have received three of your letters, but they were dated months before they arrived.
Is there any news yet of when you might expect to come home? With the latest contingents arriving in South Africa, I was hoping the First may be relieved. There are rumours, of course, but we know nothing for certain.
We received news last week that John has also volunteered for South Africa. He will serve as a doctor but does not yet know which contingent he might be attached to. Riria is not very pleased, but he is adamant he can be of some use to the New Zealand troops, and no doubt he is right.
Well, that is all from me at the moment. We all miss you very much, Joseph. Your father rides out every three weeks or so to chat about how you are getting on and to ask whether I have news of you.
Please take care, my dear, and know that you are constantly in our thoughts and our hearts.
All my love to you, your loving mam.
Joseph folded Tamar’s letter carefully and tucked it away inside his shirt. ‘One of my mam’s friends has volunteered to serve over here,’ he said. ‘John Adams. He’s a doctor and he does reconstructive surgery.’
‘That’ll come in handy,’ said Jimmy Malone as he threaded a thin strip of rag down the barrel of his rifle and pulled it slowly out through the other end. ‘Plenty of bits to sew back on.’
The New Zealanders considered themselves well and truly blooded — they had lost men to disease, battle and capture. In February the First Contingent had ridden with French’s Cavalry Division into the Orange Free State, relieved Kimberley, defeated the Boers at Paardeberg, then gone on to end the siege of Ladysmith. The long, hard march to Kimberley had been gruelling for the men but had taken an even worse toll on their horses. As the animals died from exhaustion their corpses were left where they dropped. This angered the New Zealanders, many of whom had brought their own horses and were very attached to them, and their loss affected morale. They blamed the British for not allowing the animals to acclimatise after they had arrived in South Africa, and for pushing the mounted units so hard. Joseph’s own horse had been shot from under him and he was now riding a remount captured from the Boers. Mounts provided by the British were considered inferior and avoided whenever possible.
Joseph’s contingent had also been part of the force that marched into Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State, before its
annexation by the British eight weeks later. In May, the first three contingents amalgamated to form the New Zealand Regiment commanded by Alfred Robin, now a Lieutenant-Colonel, and had subsequently taken part in the British advance through the Transvaal. The besieged town of Mafeking, defended by Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, was relieved en route, and both Johannesburg and Pretoria were taken from the Boers in the early weeks of June.
The battles, particularly in the earlier months, had been true baptisms of fire, but the New Zealanders were quickly becoming battle-hardened and developing a reputation for toughness, resilience and ability. These manly virtues were trumpeted, exaggerated and repeated endlessly in the newspapers at home to such an extent that Joseph laughed out loud one day as he was reading a copy of the
Auckland Weekly News
sent to Albert Baker by his mother. Mrs Baker had helpfully underlined all the bits describing how brave, cool and collected the New Zealanders were under fire.
Joseph had been amused, but he’d also felt moderately angry. It was a pity the papers were printing nothing about what most New Zealanders in South Africa believed was the general incompetence of many of the British commanders. In Joseph’s opinion the enlisted men weren’t too bad, but they were treated poorly by their superiors and the result was a marked lack of enthusiasm for fighting and considerable tension amongst the British ranks. At times the New Zealanders had also suffered from British incompetence. At Ottoshoop in August, the British commander Major-General Paget had launched an ill-considered attack against a strong Boer position. New Zealanders, Australians and the British yeomanry had been pinned down by heavy fire for a whole day; the wounded had to be left where they lay, the Red Cross flag was ignored and medical officers shot as they ran about trying to tend the fallen. That night, the Boers launched their own attack on the weakened
Imperial troops. They were repelled and eventually disappeared into the night, but by then the New Zealanders had lost ten men, including five officers, with sixteen men wounded.
Malone glanced at Joseph, then went back to squinting down the barrel of his rifle. ‘No offence,’ he said, ‘but how is it your mam has doctors for friends, you being a Maori?’
‘My mother is
Pakeha
.’
‘Ah. That’ll explain why you’re not very dark-skinned.’
Joseph left it at that. There was no need to tell everyone everything about himself. In fact, none of the men in his section shared much about their private lives. Names, hometowns, occupations, that was enough. What mattered was what they did now. Here, a man’s value was judged by his ability to stay alive and how much he could be depended upon. Joseph had done his share of picking mates off the ground by their webbing and dragging them out of harm’s way. Nobody commented on the fact that he was clearly not a full-blooded European.
Malone half-heartedly waved at the flies settling on his face. ‘Well, I hope your mam’s friend is good at holding out a bucket and cleaning up shite — there’s more men sick here than wounded. We had another three go down during the night.’
Joseph nodded, unsurprised. The day before, Barry Price had been carted off on a stretcher suffering from the dreaded enteric fever. He’d been pasty-faced and complaining of being too hot for a day or so, but had refused to see a medical officer. He prided himself on being as ‘hard as nails’, but the matter had been taken out of his hands when he’d collapsed at breakfast yesterday morning.
Sitting on a box outside the section’s tents, he’d raised his rump to deliver one of his monumental farts, but instead of the usual trumpeting blast, there was an explosive, watery sound and a revolting stench. With an incredulous look on his unshaven face, he’d declared, ‘Fuck! I’ve shit meself!’
Then he’d risen, caught a full whiff of his own stink, belched violently, doubled over and vomited onto the ground.
‘Oh, bloody
hell
,’ Malone had exclaimed, skipping quickly out of the way to avoid being splattered, his hand held protectively over his mug of tea.
Price had collapsed onto his side in the dirt, his hands clutched to his stomach, and emitted another noisy torrent of diarrhoea.
‘Oh, shit.’ This from Joseph. ‘Get a medical officer, someone.’
Sergeant Thornton slowly sauntered off towards the MO’s tent, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. And it did; there were more men in hospital with enteric fever than there were with battle wounds. When a medical officer arrived, dressed in his shirtsleeves with his braces hanging down and shaving soap still on his ears, he didn’t even bother to examine Price.
‘Bugger. Another one,’ he’d muttered to no one in particular. Then he had asked of Thornton, ‘Has everyone else had the same food and water as this man?’
When the sergeant nodded, the MO swore again. ‘Right, chuck it all out, it’s probably contaminated.’
Joseph and the rest of the section had looked at each other nervously, wondering who would be next.
Price was now on his way to a hospital, a journey of several days by bullock wagon, his personal possessions sent with him in case he didn’t come back, and his horse allocated to someone else. Joseph wondered if they would see him again.
On 25 October the Transvaal was annexed by the British, and the Empire’s newspapers smugly speculated the war was virtually over. Field Marshal Lord Roberts had been replaced by his chief of staff, General Lord Kitchener, and the First New Zealand Contingent was preparing to return home after eleven months of continuous
service. Forty or so men left Pretoria bound for New Zealand at the end of the month, followed in December by the remaining members of the contingent who did not want to stay in South Africa.
Joseph, Jimmy Malone and Sergeant Thornton all opted to continue fighting and transferred to the Fourth Contingent, the Rough Riders. Albert Baker, who had never quite adjusted to being a soldier, went home, as did the remaining four from the original section. Barry Price had died in hospital five days after he had fallen ill, and another soldier had been severely wounded and sent back to New Zealand in June.
The Fourth and Fifth Contingents had originally been sent from New Zealand to Beira, the capital of Portuguese East Africa, and had arrived between late April and mid-May. It had been intended that both contingents would travel by train to Rhodesia, but rail congestion kept them confined to camps where malaria and dysentery caused more casualties than battle ever could have. The troops left Beira a month later and marched hundreds of gruelling miles to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia. In August both contingents travelled by rail to Mafeking, where they joined the second brigade of the Rhodesian Field Force.
Joseph and his mates connected with the Fourth Contingent when the column arrived in southwestern Transvaal in December. Despite the British annexation of Orange Free State and the Transvaal, Kruger, Steyn and other Boer leaders had sworn to carry on their battle against the Imperial forces. They were backed by thousands of well-armed Boers in the field, and a civilian network that doggedly supported them. The style of warfare had changed from conventional military tactics to clandestine guerrilla warfare in which Boer commandos launched sudden, devastating attacks, only to disappear just as rapidly afterwards. They were fast, elusive and effective, and the British found the new style of fighting extremely frustrating.